Sector
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A sector is a group or community of micronations which share a common trait, such as a geographic region, language, close political ties, culture, history or ancestry, or a combination of such factors. Sectors are not necessarily organizations themselves but often have associated organizations within them. Sectors may be formally established or naturally develop overtime. Isolated sectors (called sector isolates) may develop unique cultures, beliefs, philosophy, political ties and customs, and hierarchies.
Geographic sectors are most common, and can be macronational, such as the Brazilian sector, Czech sector, Indonesian sector or Greek sector, based on regions or cities, such as the London Sector, Houston sector or New England Sector, or even larger, such as the Western Canada sector or African sector. Other sectors may share similar languages or culture, like the Lusophone sector or Anglophone Sector, while others are solely political, such as the TOES Sector, or various sectors which revolve around a single intermicronational organisation, like the large communities in the Grand Unified Micronational, Cupertino Alliance and the former Konmalehth.
A number of other online communities based on social medias or wikis are broadly referred to as sectors, such as Twitter, Discord, Reddit or the largest the MicroWiki Sector, which describes micronations who have formed an independent, largely self-contained micronational community on MicroWiki by using the wiki, its forums or Discord server as their primary platform for diplomatic contact and sharing information. A subsector is a sector within a sector, i.e. the Stradan sector is a subsector of the Indonesian sector, although a subsector may still be called a sector.
History
The word sector originated as a backronym from the Apollo Sector, a community of geofictional micronations that communicated principally via the Apolyton Civilization Site forums. Formed after August 1999, the sector was originally named the Apolyton Sector, but this name was later shortened to Apollo Sector by December 1999 after the micronationalists were asked to do so by the administration of the website over trademark infringement concerns. The name of the Apollo Sector itself was derived from sector, meaning "a section".
By November 2000, usage of the word sector (usually spelled with an initial capital) had begun to expand, with various different micronations and micronationalists using the term for political purposes to spread the influence of their micronations and the micronations involved. The MCS Sector, a historical name for the Micras sector based on the initials of the Micronational Cartography Society, is first attested on 13 November 2002, followed by the Micras sector (with a lowercase spelling) on 16 February 2003. The airing of the BBC's How to Start Your Own Country—hosted by Danny Wallace—between 3 August and 6 September 2005 resulted in an influx of individuals starting their own micronations, many joining the Micras Sector where they became known as the Lovely Sector after the Kingdom of Lovely featured in the series.
Sector remained obscure outside of the geofiction community until about 2006; the Portuguese term setor lingüístico (linguistic sector) was coined on 15 September 2006 by Brazilian micropatriologist Pedro Aguiar on Wikimicropídia. This indicates that sector may have entered other languages in the micronational community. Sector was further popularised in the MicroWiki community after 2009 and 2010.
Notable sectors
- African sector
- Anglophone sector
- United Kingdom sectors:
- American sectors:
Other sectors
- GUM Sector
- Micras
- MicroWiki Sector
- NationStates
- Reddit sector
- TOES Sector
- YouTube Sector
- Korp Sector
- Organization of United Micronations (2009)